The end of the wow factor

The Süddeutsche Zeitung cites a comment by architect David Chipperfield that the Wow Factor, or the iconic buildings of star architects, will become collateral damage of the financial crisis. German car maker BMW, for example, will no longer be able to finance buildings such as its "BMW World" designed by the Austrian design firm Coop Himmelb(l)au: "The decline in profits, fears about the future, the mood of crisis and the crisis of identity among the large-scale buildings which are in fact meant to establish identity is not only affecting BMW. ... Of course it applies also to all other sectors - precisely in the order in which the economic crisis, as a systemic crisis, is spreading. ... Architecture, as a natural producer of spatially operative images and at the same time as a natural - that is non fictional - ally of the real economy, is taking on a symbolic role. Brandname architecture operates with systems of signs and the means of rhetoric. For that reason it will suffer in the crisis not only because it will lack financial resources in the future, but also as a supplier of symbolism itself."

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